The present invention is related to receive diversity and multiple input multiple output, and more specifically to receive diversity and multiple input multiple output using multiple mobile devices.
Currently, there are different techniques to improve a received signal quality and/or increase the bandwidth of a transmission. Receive diversity is one technique that uses two or more receivers in a wireless or mobile device to eliminate multi-path signal distortion by either using the signal from the antenna with the best signal to noise ratio, or using an incoming signal being received on both antennas and using the good portions from a first antenna and the good portions from a second antenna.
In addition, multiple input multiple output (MIMO) techniques may include the use of multiple transmitter antennas and multiple receiver antennas on wireless devices for increasing bandwidth and improving performance. For example, when two transmitting antennas are used and two or more receiving antennas are used, two simultaneous data streams carrying different information can be sent, effectively doubling the data rate and bandwidth.
However, currently problems exist in attempting to add antennas to get additional bandwidth. To increase a data rate on a mobile device by adding additional antennas requires additional space on the mobile device thereby increasing the size of the mobile device. Moreover, a minimum distance is required between antennas to get enough diversity between the two different received signals such that they can be combined else both receive antennas may receive the same signal. Further, the lower the frequency of the received signals, the larger the size of the antennas needed and the more separation required between the two antennas. This requires a further additional increase to the size of the mobile device to support receive diversity processing and MIMO processing for increased bandwidth.